(help) using a counter

hi every one ....
iam designing astepper motor controlling circuit to control three steppers to make an automatic drillling machine ...
iused a L297 ic ,uln2803 ic, to control the direction and mode of operation through the parallell port of the pc ..
and used Lm555 to generate the clock pulses ...
the proplem is ineed to control the motor in aspesific number of rev.( like 3rev.)so iwanted to connect acounter and i used (d8253c) but i dont know how to connect it without using it's (8data input pins) the data sheet below...
i will be thankfull if anyone could clear ub that to me..

i don't know what you are doing... but you are giving me some good ideas and you are doing better than i did...

this is the circuit that 3v0 loves to make fun of me with:

when 3v0 sees that I've posted that circuit again, he's going to give me hell